A piece of a conversation between my alter-ego and her friend, Jack:
Dearest Jack,
Let me help you understand women a little tiny bit.
*Your observations are correct, in that it is true that many (too) MANY women are plagued with the heinous and heartbreaking (both to women and the nice-boys who love them ) addiction to the Bad Boys – that you speak of.
I can’t cure them Jack. Nor would I, even if I did have the power to do so. It would upset your true destiny, which I will **explain to you later, and I don’t want that on my hands.
First you must know, that you too, Jack, are guilty. Guilty of liking Bad or, as you call them, interesting Girls or, as you also call them, females.
Because I don’t care what you think or say, only Bad Girls are attracted to Bad Boys.
Don’t let the cardigans and penny-loafers fool you Jack. Under those tear stained cheeks, and side-ponytails, and freshly baked cupcakes, we are Bad. Bad. Bad. Girls.
There. The worlds hugest and most carefully guarded secret has been revealed and you were here when it happened. You’re welcome.
If we weren’t Bad Girls, tattoos wouldn’t get our panties in a knot, the way they do.
And they do.
You know it’s true. But you, YOU Jack, you feel sorry for those bad girls and their broken-hearts, and their runny mascara, and their future bastard children. And you see all the potential goodness in these girls and you want to swoop in on your stallion of love and save them .
You want to show them that they deserve better.
That they deserve a nice-boy.
A nice boy like you.
Here’s the problem, and I’m pretty sure you know where I’m going with this:
When girls meet a “Bad Boy”, we see
a sexy ( tattooed), strong (posturing) confident (arrogant), brave (stupid/inconsiderate/self-destructive) hero (jackass), who is going to hunt for and provide for and protect our future family, while flipping the veggie burgers on the Barbecue, fixing the car, and painting our white picket fence.
And you know why? Because we are women. We are maternal and biologically wired to be stupid idealistic nurturers.
You see Jack? It’s just nature.
And then you know what happens? After nature tricks us to bed these Bad Boys, and after we see their true colours, their back boils, and the credit card receipts for lingerie that we never received, she plays another trick on us.
She makes us feel sorry for them and their broken-legs, and their jail tattoos, and their mistresses, and their bastard children from a previous relationship. And we see all the potential goodness in these boys and we want to take them into our arms and save them .
we want to show them that they deserve better.
That they deserve a nice-girl.
A nice girl like us.
Only, we’re not nice.
Because after we’ve gotten sick of cleaning up after them and we have caught them cheating for the 12th time, and we realize that they are too stupid to have an intellectually stimulating conversation with, and we finally and once-and-for-all have had it with these morons; we rub poison ivy in their boxers, kick them out, sleep with the singer of their favourite band, and call…
YOU.
But guess what Jack.
You can’t answer your cell phone Jack, you’re in Cape Cod, on vacation with your skinny, ageless, Japanese wife and two beautiful children, frolicking in the waves and drinking champagne out of eachother’s belly buttons and and your cell phone is an iPhone and your fingers are too slippery from all that buttery lobster you’ve been eating, to slide the little virtual-answer-icon over.
So we buy ourselves a cheap bottle of wine from the dep and drink it alone, while listening to the soundtrack to Amélie and drunk-texting our belligerent (and probably also drunk) teenage children, who respond with threats to have us committed.
Then when the bottle is empty, we dig the cooking wine out from under the sink, and we drink that, and masturbate until we cry ourselves to sleep, in the middle of the dining room floor.
Hope this clears things up for you.
Love Damiana/Jennifer-June
xx
*Whoever constructed that sentence should be charged with grammar assault and have their wine privileges revoked for 3 weeks.
**The perfect Japanese wife and beautiful kids and buttery lobster thing.